Heinrich Campendonk - Fear. Ink, partly wash,... Lot 720

Heinrich Campendonk - Fear. Ink, partly wash, on fine Japanese handmade paper. (1914/15). Approx. 52.5 x 41 cm. - Large format and expressive drawing - From the artistically important period in Sindelsdorf - Typical and particularly impressive hand-head motif "They (the hands) should stand out, they are a stylistic device (...). Campendonk was (...) by no means the 'born' draftsman. Much more intense was always his relationship to color. It is therefore remarkable that the breakthrough to personal expression he sought succeeds in a more graphic medium such as ink brush drawing." (Gisela Geiger, in: Ausst.-Kat. Penzberg 2002, p. 79). The large-format ink brush drawing 'Angst' shows a woman in expressive gesture with her hand raised next to her head - a very typical motif in Campendonk's pictorial world. The roughly, almost clumsily drawn hand is a striking motif that he uses repeatedly and deliberately. The fearfully widened eyes, on the other hand, are rather an exception, since his faces otherwise show hardly any emotion. The combination of head and hand is an expression of suffering and can be found numerous times in Campendonk's works. He probably sent the earliest drawing of this motif to the poet Else Lasker-Schüler in 1912 in memory of her visit to Sindelsdorf. It is possible that the depicted "woman with Japanese hairstyle and raised hand" also bears her facial features: "This visit to the Marc family in 1912, which was not a happy one, showed the rushed nature of the metropolitan bohemian (Lasker-Schüler), who found the rural tranquility to be torture." (Gisela Geiger, in: Ausst.-Kat. Penzberg 2002, p. 81). Campendonk increasingly developed the suffering motif further, towards the expression of a painful melancholy, which he even chose as a self-portrait for his portrait photo of the STURM postcard in 1916. "Its most frequent execution, however, finds the head-hand combination in relation to the suffering Christ. So, for example, in the 'Passion Window' or in all later depictions of the crucifixion. Either it is Mary who raises her hand or the crucified himself. It is this quotation that brings the emotional component of suffering or compassion into the otherwise cool depiction." (Gisela Geiger, ibid.). Not at Firmenich. Exhibition: Heinrich Campendonk. Oberbayern - Station Penzberg, Stadtmuseum Penzberg, 2002, b/w ill. p. 80; From Monet to Mondrian. Masterpieces of Modernism from Dresden Private Collections of the First Half of the 20th Century, Palais Brühlsche Terrasse, Galerie Neue Meister, Staatliche Kunstammlungen Dresden, 2006/07, cat. no. 36, ill. p. 172. Provenance: collection Max Roesberg, Dresden/Santiago de Chile; private collection, Bonn; Von Zengen, Bonn 13/14.9.2013, lot 646; private property, North Rhine-Westphalia. Taxation: Differentially taxed VAT: Margin Scheme